How sections control page formatting. To start a new section in your document, heed these steps:. Position the toothpick cursor where you want the new section to start. Click the mouse where you need to begin a new section, similar to creating a new page break. Click the Layout tab on the Ribbon. In the Page Setup area, click the Breaks button. A menu appears, listing several items.
The last four items are various section breaks. Choose Next Page from the Breaks button menu. A page break is inserted in your document; a new section has started. When using Print Layout view, the section break looks like a page break.
The Show number on first page property pertains only to the first page of the document if there are no Section Breaks or the H/F run from start to finish. If there are differing Section Breaks the property pertains to the first page of the Section you're in a the time you modify the check box.
![Section Section](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125464725/564749129.png)
It works like one too: Text stops on the page before the section break and then starts at the top of the next page. Each page, however, is in a different document section. After the section is created, you can modify the page layout and format of each section in your document. Choose Continuous in Step 4 to place a more flexible form of section break into your document. Depending on which page formats are changed between sections, the Continuous section break may start a new page or it may not. The Even Page and Odd Page section breaks work just like the Next Page section break, but they happen only on even pages or odd pages, respectively. These section breaks are designed for documents that use odd and even headers or sport unique margins for binding purposes.
When working with sections, place the Section item on the status bar: Right-click the status bar and choose Section from the menu. The Section item lists the current section by number as you work through your document.
Have you ever struggled to get the formatting of a long document looking like you want in each section? Let’s explore the Breaks tool in Word and see how you can use breaks to get your documents formatted better. Word includes so many features, it’s easy to overlook some that can be the exact thing we’re looking for.
Most of us have used Page Breaks in Word, but Word also includes several other breaks to help your format your documents. Let’s look at each break and see how you can use them in your documents. Where are all the breaks hiding? If you’re using Office 2007 or 2010, you can insert a Page Break from the Insert tab.
All the other breaks are listed in the Page Layout tab. Click the Breaks button, and you’ll see all 7 of the page and section breaks you can use in Word. Ok, now you’re ready to add breaks to your document.
Here’s what each one can do: Page Break Page Break is the one most of us have used, and you can add one from the Insert tab or the Page Layout tab. As you likely already know from experience, page breaks only start you on the next page; all formatting will be kept the same from your original page to your new one. Use this when you want to just start typing on a new page but want the formatting to all stay the same.
Column Break Have you ever been writing a multi-column document and wanted the last line on the column to go to the next line? You could just press Enter a couple more times, but then your formatting will be messed up if you edit your text. A better way is to insert a Column Break. This will move you to the next column, leaving your previous text in the first column.
If you go back and add more text to the first column, it’ll just go on down in the same column unless you add enough to overflow it. Text Wrapping Want to have caption text around a picture? Select the text beside the picture, and select Text Wrapping. This will let you keep this text together with consistent formatting, and will flow the rest of the document around this section. Next Page, Section Break, and Even/Odd Page Breaks The most important break, in our opinion, is the Next Page break. Unlike the standard Page Break, this option moves you to the next page and gives you entirely separate formatting in the new section. The Even and Odd Page breaks let you insert a section break and go to the next even or odd page, respectively, so you can easily format your documents for left and right pages in a book.
Alternately, the Continuous break does the same thing without putting you on a new page. Want to switch from 2 column text to single column, or want to apply a new font scheme to only the cover page? This is the break you’ll want. Now you can format a full document with cover, contents, and references, all with their own unique formatting but saved in the same document. Using Section Breaks with Footers Formatting footers correctly takes a bit more work. By default, your document footers will have the same content even on pages with section breaks. To change this, double-click a header or footer in the new section of your document, and click the Link to Previous button to turn linking off.
Now your footers and headers will be fully unique between your document sections. You can also choose to just keep your first page or your odd and even pages with different footers and headers. To do this, check the appropriate box on Options in the Footer and Header Design tab. Now you can take advantage of all the different types of document breaks to get your documents formatted just like you need. Microsoft often mentions that 90% of it’s users only use 10% of the features in Office. Hopefully this will help you take advantage of a little more of Office’s features to make it easier to format documents.